We live in a scary world, and I'm not talking just about terrorism. Or Dick Cheney or even Pirate baseball. I'm talking about everyday life.

For openers, eating can be hazardous to your health, even beyond the wholesale chowing down that has produced the current obesity craze. It's been clear for some time that you don't have to be a glutton to risk your life at the dinner table. With the exception of a few nuts and berries, practically every food or beverage has been fingered as a killer at one time or another -- bacon, farm-raised salmon, eggs, doughnuts, salt, water, you name it.

Many of us might be starving if it weren't for the marketing geniuses who rehabilitate discredited foods by building a diet around them. So, for example, thanks to the late Dr. Atkins, we can load up on a wide range of indicted edibles -- bacon, butter, whole cows even. But lay off the rigatoni!

Next up: the All-Beach High-Mercury Fish Diet. Bon appetit, and good luck getting through the airport metal detector.

To counteract the perils of eating, we take drugs -- I mean the legal ones produced by the companies that sponsor Congress. But, as you know, this is dangerous, too. Just reading a drug warning label is enough to make you keel over dead.

Side effects may include nausea, dementia, lumbago, neuritis, neuralgia, nostalgia, blurred vision, poor television reception, drowsiness, insomnia, light-headedness, swelled-headedness, loss of appetite, loss of car keys, obesity, constipation, consternation, diarrhea, sexual dysfunction, wardrobe malfunction, nymphomania, priapism, Catholicism and tired blood.

In case of suicide, contact a mortician immediately and do not operate heavy machinery.

Every time I read a warning like that I wonder if I'd be better off using a safer drug such as LSD. You'd think with all that money, they'd be able to work out the kinks, at the very least cut down the side effects to the length of a Russian novel.

At this point, I'm required to point out that even this column, though obviously life-enhancing, carries a warning.

Let's say you're doing something routine, such as sitting with your love on a mountaintop in separate bathtubs holding hands as the sun sets over a breathtaking view. There couldn't be a more ideal moment for reading a column, right?

Probably yes, but maybe no.

Warning: This column is guaranteed to hold up for 36 hours. Men still bolt upright reading this column for more than four hours, though rare, require immediate medical attention.

But perhaps nothing is quite as scary as the current employment scene. Even if we manage to survive eating and taking medicine, none of us can feel secure at work any more.

Did you know that this column is being outsourced to Bangalore, India? That's right, a guy named Surendra -- "Skip" to his American clients -- is being trained to crank out the Leo column at the 24/7 Bangalore Humor Writing Center.

I never thought it would come to this. I thought I was unique. But these people are extraordinarily smart and well-trained. Skip can do it all -- pothole, PennDOT and prothonotary jokes, even Cyril Wecht impressions -- at one-eighth my salary.

And he has an uncanny grasp of regionalisms ("I am wanting to ask how you need helped?" "That nebby Mayor Murphy is in deep doo-doo, isn't it?") Plus, he can meet deadlines.

I don't hold a grudge against Skip, who's got job security and, because he's a non-drug-using vegetarian, a life expectancy of 112, with health benefits extended for up to two reincarnations.

The PG is letting me hang on through Skip's training period. And the column will still carry my name and picture. But, eventually, I'll be put out to pasture, no doubt one that's pesticide-filled, where, thanks to Dr. Atkins, I'll be able to eat all I want.

Here's where you come in. When my outsourcing becomes final and I'm history, if you can't stand a column, write your member of Congress and display one of my bumper stickers: "Hands off raw column producers," "No column dumping!" "Columns: Buy American."

On the other hand, if you like the column, keep it to yourself.

First Published: March 29, 2004, 5:00 a.m.